| [BACK]
More and more mistakes! Faster and faster they flow, threatening to engulf our very beings! So far they are: Mistake #1: Going Out with your Script Before It's Ready; #2: Going Out with your Script Before YOU'RE Ready; #3: Going Out with your Scripts Before The Industry is Ready; #4: Taking the Easy Road; #5: Taking the Hard Road; and #6: Not Writing From Your Heart.
So besides doing everything right in terms of THE WAY you write your scripts, you've also chosen subject matter that you FEEL, that has something of YOU invested in it, that you've seasoned with generous dollops of your heart, your mind, your very soul. THIS is the kind of script that will make any reader sit up in their seat and vigorously label it "consider" or, perhaps, even "recommend." Right?
Uh....well...hmm. Possibly. But then again, possibly not. Yes, your script might fairly sing with that personal passion, that heartfelt intensity that every great script must have. But you may be, at the same time, committing...
Mistake #7: Not Writing From Your Wallet.
"Oh my sweet lord, you've got to be screwing with us. You just got finished telling us NOT to create empty commercial crap and to instead write something PERSONAL.!"
No I didn't, and if you'd really been listening, you'd know this! I said don't write EMPTY commercial crap, but I DIDN'T say don't write commercial crap. And I may have said you have to feel personally connected to your subject matter, but that doesn't mean that your subject matter can't be commercial. In fact, it had better be!
Look, you can feel immensely passionate about certain things, but that doesn't mean they should be movies. I once went through a very emotional experience having to do with a math class I took in college; I wanted to challenge myself with hard material, but it almost drove me crazy. Now while I could write about that, and that writing would be heartfelt, it would be a major snooze-fest for any audience. Well, no it wouldn't, because it would never be made into a movie.
The bottom line is this: a movie is a tremendous undertaking, requiring massive amounts of money and labor (even so-called low budget affairs.) And it's a business proposition. To justify its existence, a movie has to have a reasonable chance of turning a profit. And while many movies certainly don't perform this profit-turning trick, that was the intent in them being set up in the first place. Novice writer that you are, you can bank on the fact that your script will be judged by this criteria.
People claim they know all this, but then I see things like very high-budget sci-fi scripts with moody, cerebral, character-driven stories, and a defecit of action. I see huge, period costume epics with the same symptoms. These are usually well-written pieces, and they would usually make great novels, but how could you ever justify the massive budget it would take to produce such pieces, when the audience for the movie would presumably be small (at least a studio executive would see it that way.) Readers and development folk know this well, and hence will toss your expensive, non-commercial spec in the circular file with extreme prejudice.
And don't think that a "little" non-commercial script will save you. Studios are in the business of producing big movies for big audiences. Small, artistic scripts usually get set up at smaller houses, or made independently. If you're looking to spark the interest of the Big Boys, write something big that many people will want to see, preferably more than once.
So, to reiterate, pick stories to tell that you feel passionate about. But then only WRITE about the ones that have some commercial value. If you want to write about your experience in a math class, then turn it into "Good Will Hunting." It's finding this balance between things you feel strongly about and things audiences will pay to see that will guarantee the success of your screenplay.
Well, not quite. We still have three more mistakes to go, right? Have a good week. |
